Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(114)

"What the f*ck is wrong with you?" Alexander asked, taking the gag out of Pasha's mouth.

"Why did you have to tell me about my family." There was no inflection.

"You asked me."

"You could have lied. You could have said they were all right."

"You would have wanted that?"

"Yes. A thousand times yes. A small comfort to a dying man in the rain, I would have wanted that."

Alexander wiped the rain off Pasha's face.

Then he regrouped his men, and they all took their positions along the trees. After a morning smoke, they opened feeble fire that was not returned. In the woods the sound of war was too close. A meter away, a kilometer away, the canopy of the leaves, the denseness of the underbrush, the slight damp echo made the fire sound oppressively close. Fields were better, mines were better, tanks were better. This was the worst.

He had only nineteen men left. Nineteen men and a hostage that both sides wanted dead.

They stopped firing and sat under the trees. Alexander sat mutely next to Pasha. He had tried to get Gronin on the phone again, but the telephone was cutting out and he could hardly hear. His men were nearly out of ammunition.

Ouspensky came and whispered that they needed to kill the commander to make headway in the woods. Alexander said they would wait.

And through it all, it rained.

Hours went by before Pasha finally moved his head, gesturing for Alexander, who took off the gag.

"Maybe now a cigarette," Pasha said.

Alexander handed Pasha a cigarette.

After taking a long satisfying drag, Pasha said, "How did you meet her anyway?"

"Fate brought us together," Alexander replied. "On the first day of war, I was patrolling the streets and she was eating ice cream."

"Just like her," Pasha said. "She nods and then does what she wants. Her instructions were very clear: don't dawdle; go and get food." He glanced at Alexander. "That day was the last day I saw her. Saw my family."

"I know." With a hurting heart, Alexander said, "What am I going to do with you, Pasha Metanov, the brother of my wife?"

Pasha shrugged. "That's your problem. Let me tell you about my men. I've got fifty of them in the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

woods. Five commissioned lieutenants. Five sergeants. What do you think they're going to do without me? They will never surrender. They will retreat just far enough to join up with the Wehrmacht motorized divisions protecting the western side of the mountains. You know how many troops are waiting there for you? Half a million. How far do you think your nineteen men are going to get? I know how the penal battalions work. No one will resupply you if they need the supplies themselves. What are you going to do?"

"My lieutenant thinks we should kill you."

"He is right. I'm the commander of the last vestige of General Vlasov's army. After I'm dead, there won't be any of us left."

"How do you know?" asked Alexander. "I hear the Vlasovites are running amok in Romania, raping the Romanian women."

"What does that have to do with me? I'm in Poland."

Alexander sat defeated with his hands on his legs. "What happened to you? Your family would have liked to know."

"Don't tell me anymore about my family," Pasha said, his voice catching.

"Your mother and father were torn up after you vanished."

"Mama was always so emotional," Pasha said and started to cry. "I thought it was kinder that way. Not to know. Suspect the worst. This is all slow death anyway."

Alexander didn't know if it was kinder. "Tania went to your camp in Dohotino looking for you."

"She's a fool," he said, his voice full of weeping affection.

Alexander moved a little closer. "The camp was abandoned, and then she moved on to Luga days before the Luga line fell to the Germans. She wanted to make her way to Novgorod to find you. She was told that's where the Dohotino camp members were sent."

"We were sent..." Pasha shook his head and laughed miserably. "God looks after Tania in mysterious ways. Always has. Had she gone to Novgorod, she would have died for sure, and I was never even close to Novgorod. The closest I got to Novgorod was passing Lake Ilmen in a train that the Germans blew up just south of the lake."

"Lake Ilmen?"

Neither man could look at the other. "She told you about that lake?"

"She's told me everything," said Alexander.

Pasha smiled. "We spent our childhood on that lake. She was the queen of Lake Ilmen. So, she came looking for me? She was always something, my sister. If anyone could have found me, it would have been her."

"Yes. But it turns out thatI found you." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Yes, in f*cking Poland! I wasn't in Novgorod. The Nazis blew up our train and with dead bodies piled house-high, they set us on fire. Me and my friend Volodya were the only ones who survived. We scrambled our way out of the compost heap and tried to find our own troops but of course the entire countryside belonged to the Germans by then. Volodya had broken his leg in camp weeks before. We couldn't get very far. We were taken prisoner in hours. The Germans had no use for Volodya. They shot him dead." He shook his head. "I'm glad his mother didn't know. Did you know his mother? Nina Iglenko?"